There is another reason which never gets talked about: men are generally at least as interested in finding a long-term partner as women are. Statistically speaking, it’s better for their health and general well-being…although in my opinion that’s because of the socio-cultural dichotomy between the sexes: women are allowed to have feelings, admit they want and need to be around other people for support, etc. A man without a partner in our culture really is on his own island in a way that is very inhumane.
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That would be a fun little Art Project.
Ahh Tango and Cash.
See, I don’t think its true that women are more “discerning” in that regard… I think women just don’t talk real numbers because they know they’ll be judged for it. /shrug - my two cents.
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You know when I see statistics like this I start to realize 4Chan isn’t all that wrong… I mean /r9k/ probably has more female lurkers than one realizes, but the ratio of male to female anons is pretty damn higher. And I should clarify that to mean verified female anons…
AM is sort of like /soc/…a handful of women and a ton of thirsty guys…sigh. You know minus all the weird shit that goes on 4Chan…
Although, to be fair, we mustn’t make assumptions. Perhaps there was a reason AM was a massive sausage fest.
The writer of this post is badly informed, which makes me not trust anything in it. There are no “paying women customers” at all on Ashley Madision, the site uses the “nightclub” model, and is free for women. I know, because I use it regularly. I think the number of women using the site isn’t accurately reflected in any of the articles about the hack because none of the writers seem to get that we women didn’t have to register with credit card numbers and other personal data. I never gave AM my real name at any time, or any credit card info or other personal information. They have an email address that’s real but it’s one no one else has, so I have little to fear, and suspect the same is true for most women.
Welcome to BoingBoing Noel Biderman! 
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You loved this discreet matching service so much that you’d be willing to risk exposure to do free PR for them after they totally fucking botched the discretion piece.
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I’m pointing out the facts in the original post are wrong.
The article which you clearly didn’t read specifically states:
My analysis had to be entirely based on the profiles themselves, not the credit card data. There is no such thing as a “paid account” for women because women don’t have to pay for anything on Ashley Madison. As a result, I couldn’t use “paid account” as a proxy for “real,” the way analysts have done with the male data.
Edit:
In fairness, @beschizza does indeed say
So if that’s what you were referring to, I apologise.
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He’s pointing out a great big hole in your credibility. I read the Gizmodo piece. It takes into account the lack of credit card info very well. The writer was a woman, after all - she couldn’t very well set up a paid account when she was researching the story. She analysed the dumped data - you know, the stuff that real users would be aghast at seeing get out? The kind of stuff that has already sparked class actions?
Welcome to Boing Boing. I think you may soon have the interesting experience of meeting a dragon.
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The “paying” part would have been “paid for the data removal service” that turned out to be no such thing. But re-reading the original report, that’s not what the 12k number refers to, so I was mistaken anyway.
In any case, only 1500 or so “women” ever checked their messages, soooooooo…
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Turns out the Ashley Madison is even “classier” (in the trump sense of the word) then we though:
They were working on an app for guys to post and rate pictures of each other’s wives, assigning a dollar value, a really low dollar value, to the worth of a human being…even worse there was going to be a bid feature…
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/ashley-madison-whats-your-wife-worth/
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Was the feature called “Pimp My Bride”?
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Codename: HENNY YOUNGMAN
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I like how the headline here used the word “sad” when describing the scam.
We can joke about it all we like, and I’m as quick to make snarky comments as anyone, but (weirdly) it’s not much of a relief to know that millions of lonely guys in loveless marriages weren’t actually using this service to have affairs.
Maybe there’s some other metric involved here, some biological or sociological reason it was almost all men trying to cheat (or maybe they weren’t even all married, just taking advantage of what they thought were wives cheating on their husbands, like that was a particular turn-on for them), but this kind of thing emphasizes how many lonely people there are out there.
Be thankful for what you’ve got, don’t let it drift away.
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This is actually good news for the uses exposed by the hack. You can’t be prosecuted for intending to have an affair you never had.
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No Flight of the Conchords yet?
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